SO HELP ME GOD! is the story of Kerry, a young
actress from Cincinnati, equal parts ambition
and idealism, struggling to remain thus on her
road to success on Broadway, 1929. In a New York
minute, Kerry lands a supporting part as well as
the job of understudy to the great Lily Darnley,
the temperamental and tempestuous leading lady.
Apparently chosen because she has neither experience,
talent, nor blond hair that might compete with Miss
Darnley’s, Kerry nevertheless ends up threatening to
steal the show.
Lily is a creation as fascinating and unforgettable as Roxie
Hart, the “merry murderess” from CHICAGO, the bestknown work by Maurine Dallas Watkins. Like CHICAGO,
SO HELP ME GOD! is a satirical comedy focused on a
woman with an insatiable desire for attention and the
people and industries that thrive on her success. “Nothing
is more amusing than Roxie’s increasingly voracious
appetite for the front-page,” writes Brooks Atkinson in his
New York Times review of CHICAGO in 1926. But indeed
Lily’s desire to be center stage may be even more hilarious.
Caricature above from a Playbill for Show Boat, 1928.

“Why, there should be a line at the stage door to see me –Just
waiting for a glimpse, nudging each other; “That’s her – Lily
Darnley!” School girls, shop girls, housewives, debutantes—I am
what they’d all like to be: I’m beauty, I’m romance, I’m glamour…”
SO HELP ME GOD! was slated to open on Broadway on
October 28, 1929 (the title had been changed that fall to
AN OLD FASHIONED GIRL.) Starring Helen MacKellar as
Lily Darnley and Sylvia Sydney as Kerry, it first played the
“Subway Circuit” in Brooklyn and Queens, then a popular
option for tryouts. Mysteriously, on October 16, a notice
appeared in The New York Times that the play was being
“withdrawn for revision” Eight days, later, on October 24,
the stock market crashed, escalating to the “Black Tuesday”
disaster of October 29. The Great Depression had begun,
and any Broadway hopes for SO HELP ME GOD! were gone.
Apparently Watkins stashed the play in a figurative drawer
where it remained for 80 years until the literary agent for
the Watkins estate brought the play to “the diligent literary
bloodhounds at Mint Theater Company,” (Time Out New
York).